US Losing R&D Edge (2015 MIT Study)

MIT authors warn government is spending ever-smaller share of budget on basic research. “Though the U.S. leads the world in total R&D outlays, Europe and Asia have been raising their government investment. The Battelle Memorial Institute, a basic-research lab, and R&D Magazine estimated in 2013 that China would spend more than $600 billion annually on R&D by the early 2020s, making it the world’s biggest such investor. The same report estimated that U.S. R&D spending would total $465 billion, or 2.8% of gross domestic product, in 2014. For China, spending was pegged at $284 billion, or 2% of GDP.”